Association with the Catholic Herald gets Serenhedd James sent to the Tower
The tube train lurched just at the wrong moment, but Cardinal Nichols graciously forbore an ungainly obeisance. Much has been made of Pope Francis’s regular use of public transport when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires; it is good to know that Londoners may be just as likely to bump into the Archbishop of Westminster in similar circumstances. We were, inevitably, heading in the same direction and to the same event. I teased His Eminence that in a different age the leader of the Catholics of England and Wales might have approached the Tower of London with some trepidation.
The head count of Tower Hill is as impressive as it is bloody, even at a distance of many centuries. In the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, our particular destination, the headless bodies of Ss John Fisher & Thomas More still lie; others, perhaps less well known, are there also. When we reached the entrance our names were on different lists; obviously the welcoming party knew who the Cardinal was, and by the time I found mine he had been swept off by a waiting attendant. Looking up, I saw him being led away to the nether regions of the palace; I was directed to join a group outside the gate. A foretaste of the eschaton, no doubt.
St Peter ad Vincula, with its apposite dedication to apostolic imprisonment, remains one of His Majesty’s Chapels Royal, and on 11 October it was the setting for a spectacular choral performance by The Sixteen, courtesy of John Studzinski and The Genesis Foundation. It had originally been conceived as a way of honouring Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee through music associated with her reign, and also with the shorter (but still lengthy) span of Elizabeth I’s. There was a prominent twentieth-century flavour; Michael Tippett featured, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten’s glorious Gloriana Dances.
As John Studzinski has writtenelsewhere in these pages, the concert was recast as a tribute to the late Queen. As The Sixteen waited for their cue to begin it was good to spot among their ranks friends from misspent musical youth, most notably the countertenor Simon Ponsford, whom the world last saw as Queen Elizabeth’s coffin was carried out of Westminster Abbey, where he is a lay vicar, on 19 September. He was previously a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, so is no stranger to royal services. Good singers really do get about.
The Cardinal welcomed the gathered guests warmly and prayerfully; clearly the bag he had had with him on the Underground had contained his piped cassock, scarlet fascia and zucchetto. He introduced Harry Christophers, The Sixteeen’s director, after which all proceeded faultlessly. The horn of a nearby tug, passing under Tower Bridge, competed briefly to give the note for Thomas Tallis’s O Sacrum Convivium; it was a salutary reminder of the world outside, from which the invited assembly had passed for an hour of otherwise otherworldly indulgence.
Most poignant, inevitably, was William Byrd’s O Lord Make Thy Servant Elizabeth Our Queen to Rejoice In Thy Strength, all polyphony and delicious false relations and English cadences; its prayer to “give her a long life” can hardly be said to have gone unanswered in any of its English contexts. It served as personal memento mori, too, for never again shall I hear it performed liturgically in my lifetime. The same is true, I suppose, of Cecilia McDowall’s setting of a near-identical text, commissioned for the concert by the Genesis Foundation.
It stole the show: a stirring combination of homophony and movement; oozing dissonance and resolution; a harp part, played with verve and dexterity by Sioned Williams (formerly principal harpist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for nearly three decades); hints of the Iberian peninsula and shifting desert sands. Christophers had also picked up on the last, although over a drink later the composer insisted on its coincidence. It seemed oddly like an old favourite; even thought it was brand new, the audience welcomed it enthusiastically. McDowall’s output is prodigious, and she rarely disappoints.
Tallis and Byrd framed the programme, and I hope deliberately. Despite the official anti-Catholic tyranny that prevailed under Elizabeth I’s ministers, the so-called Virgin Queen was not above turning a blind eye when it suited her. Both men were Catholics, who worked unhindered in her ecclesiastical household with her encouragement and recompense. Perhaps there are fewer better places on earth to reflect on the many contradictions of that turbulent period than the chapel of the Tower of London.
What an event it was. I am conscious that I have written little about the music: its tones and nuances; its use of vocal colour; its effervescence and pathos; all those adjectives that arts reviewers are wont or meant to use. Deliberately, I promise; the concert is available on Classic FM to be enjoyed at leisure. I had a moment of panic at the sumptuous reception afterwards, when Melanie McDonagh appeared at my elbow and I thought there might have been a coverage clash. “No”, she assured me, with the slogan that the National Lottery used to trot out to encourage people to buy tickets: “It’s you.”
A Tribute to the Life and Reign of Elizabeth II: A Garland for the Queen is available at Classic FM.
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